AMOUR: Our Category of Films and Directors that are Abandoned, Misunderstood, Overlooked, Underestimated, Revisited.
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun was born in 1961 in Abéché, Chad. He left Chad during the civil wars of the 1980s. The first Chadian full-length filmmaker, he both writes and directs his work. Though he has lived in France since 1982, most of his films have been set in and/or made in Chad.
Haroun studied film at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma in Paris. He later pursued journalism at Bordeaux I.U.T (Technical Institute), and worked for several years as a journalist in France.
He directed his first short film “Tan Koul” in 1991, but achieved fame after his second short, “Maral Tanié” in 1994. This film is the story of Halimé, a girl of 17, whose family forces her to marry a man in his fifties, but she refuses to consummate the marriage.
In 1999, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun released his first feature Bye Bye Africa, which he wrote, directed, and starred in. A docu-drama, it relates the story of a film director who returns to his home country of Chad. Bye Bye Africa, which received a jury mention at the Venice Film Fest, is considered to be the first feature from Chad.
In 2002, he wrote and directed his second feature, Abouna, which won best cinematography award at FESPACO in 2003. Set in the capital of Chad, N’Djamena, Abouna is the story of two young brothers (Amine and Tahir) who wake up one morning and realise that their father has left the family. The boys decide to search for their father in the city. While watching a movie in the cinema, they think they recognize their father as one of the actors. They try to steal the film to examine it but they are caught by the police. Unsure of how to deal with them and becoming mentally exhausted herself, their mother sends them away to a Koranic school. Here they hatch a plan to escape and find their father – that is until Tahir meets a mute girl at the school.
He then shot a documentary, Kalala, an intimate portrait of Hissein Djibrine (nicknamed Kalala), a close friend of Haroun who died in 2003 of AIDS. Djibrine produced the filmmaker’s first two features, and Haroun wanted to honor his memory.
In 2006, Haroun directed Dry Season (Daratt), the story of young Akim, who at 16 left his village in Chad for the capital, N’Djamena, to avenge his father. He finds the murderer, a former war criminal and gets hired as apprentice in his bakery. But with this man Akim experiences feelings that he never had before.
In 2008, he directed Sex, Okra and Salted Butter, a comedy about the lives of a family of Chadian immigrants in Bordeaux, France. Hortense cheats on her older husband, her husband also strays, their older son goes conceal his true sexuality, while the two younger sons are looking for guidance outside the family.
In 2010, he directed his fourth feature, A Screaming Man, which won the Jury Prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Fest. This film tells the story of Adam and his son Abdel who are separated by the civil war in Chad. The father’s job is in jeopardy because the new management of the hotel wants to give his job to his son. The presence of rebels in N’Djamena pushes Adam to lose any way to contact his son. Haroun received the Robert Bresson Prize for this film at the Venice Film Fest.
In 2013, Grisgris was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Fest. Set in Chad, the film tells the story of Grisgris, a young disabled man, who dreams of becoming a dancer and gets involved in smuggling. With Grisgris, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun aimed to show a country in a state of reconstruction.
In 2016, Haroun was again at Cannes to present his documentary Hissein Habré, a Chadian Tragedy, about the brutal dictator from 1982 to 1990, Hissein Habré. The film consists of interviews with the Victims of the Hissein Habré Regime, talking about their arrests and tortures by the secret police.
In 2017 Haroun made his second feature set in France, A Season in France, about Abbas, a French teacher in the Central African Republic who fled with his family during the civil war, still haunted by the memory of his wife killed during their journey. When he returns to France, he falls in love with Carole, a woman who helps him and his two sons. Unable to obtain refugee status, Abbas and his brother are given a notice of deportation and are forced to make hard choices.
Haroun’s 2020 film Lingui, set in Chad, focused on the problems faced by Amina, who is 30, and her daughter Maria, who is half her age. When Amina, a practicing Muslim, realizes that her daughter is pregnant and that she wants to have an abortion, the two women are confronted by the fact that abortion is both illegal and “immoral” in Chad.
